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Student Youth Programmes Events - The Smile Ball

by Kate Binchy

When we arrived back from ISLC in August 2009, we were each told to think of one main fundraising idea for the coming year. My idea was The Smile Ball. Every year in Clonmel and various other places in Ireland, there is a hunt ball for the Pony Club. This is for 3rd and 4th year students. It begins with a meal and is followed by a disco. The event is formal - black tie is required for the boys and the tickets are €40. It’s always a huge success as there is only one a year, so people really look forward to it.

This year in school, our Young Social Innovators group, “Smile Like You Mean It”, chose Operation Smile Ireland as our charity. I mentioned my idea to the other girls at the beginning of the year and everyone was on board straight away.

Wanting our event to be different to the Hunt Ball we contacted the Hotel Minella in Clonmel. The hotel offered us the 29th of December, and we agreed to this date as we wanted to have the ball in their hotel.

In November 2009, I went to France on an exchange for 6 weeks. We began organising The Smile Ball the week I got home. We decided to invite 3rd, 4th and 5th years. We rang the hotel to confirm the date and find out the costs. We also contacted a printing office in Clonmel who agreed to print the tickets. It was decided that €35 was an appropriate ticket price as it was very soon after Christmas and it would be too much to ask people to pay anymore than that.

We had great difficulty encouraging people to go to the ball as many people were gone away after Christmas or didn’t have the money to go. We changed the dress code to formal dress instead of black tie in the hopes that it would encourage more boys to go.

As the day drew nearer, we were all really worried we wouldn’t be able to pay the hotel’s asking price as we didn’t have enough people. We knew if we didn’t pay it we would be fundraising for the rest of the year, with none of the money going to Operation Smile Ireland. We all brainstormed and came up with the idea of holding a raffle on the night. We were donated the money to buy and iPod for the boys and a Juicy bag for the girls.

The night of the ball finally arrived and we all waited anxiously in the lobby for the guests. Luckily the night was a great success. 120 people turned up, which was more than we expected and we raised enough money to pay for the hotel along with €650 for Operation Smile Ireland, which is just over 2 operations! All in all the night was a success but we definitely learned from our mistakes and will be more prepared the next time!